DVD releases of movies from the Xerox era

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I'm not sure if I'm able to completely visualize it, but it sounds like in some of the movies they only used partial line overlay. Which is a bit different from the other stories where we are told that either they used it or not.

[Farerb]

I have a few questions:
1. Why were the Ink & Paint women let go after Disney started using Xerox, wouldn't they still need people to paint the cells? 2. Shouldn't the paint erase the unwanted lines? How come the cells still had sketchy look?

[blackcauldron85]

To answer #1:
Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney's Animation by Mindy Johnson, (c) 2017 Disney Enterprises, Inc., Disney Editions, Los Angeles

p.273

Don Iwerks noted, "There was a concern that there was going to be a great layoff, that they wouldn't need the Inkers anymore, [but] the plan was to train the Inkers to operate the equipment."

p.273 still

only a handful of Inkers would be kept on, and the rest would be woven into Xerox teams or other areas of artistry and production. "None of them were fired," noted Ken Anderson. "None."

For #2, Xerox replaced inking, and whether it's a hand-inked or Xerox-inked film, the lines are visible...sure, Xerox only had black lines originally, where the hand-inked films could utilize different colored lines, but there was still the ink portion of the cel, and there was the painted portion of the cel. I hope I'm explaining what I'm thinking correctly...

[Farerb]

Thank you.
So the painting remained the same even after they started using Xerox?

[blackcauldron85]

Yes. Here's a neat infographic? from Disney about Xerox and Ink & Paint (#20 talks about paint) {PDF format}
https://mamalikesthis.com/wp-content/up ... nt_FIN.pdf

[Farerb]

That was interesting to read. Thank you

[blackcauldron85]

I like buying old magazines with Disney articles, and this one (SF Movieland, August 1985) I just got briefly mentions APT:

The Black Cauldron is the first animated feature to implement the Animation Photo Transfer Process (APT), a new method of cartooning. APT transfers the artist's drawings to a photosensitive layer on the animator's cel. When the layer is washed, a clear duplicate is left on the cel.

-SF Movieland, August 1985, "It Took Disney 7 Years, 68 Animators and 2,519,200 Drawings to Reach into The Black Cauldron," by Sharon Williams, pg. 15

*edit*
Xerox and APT are mentioned in this cool article I posted on the TBC thread:
viewtopic.php?p=762707#p762707

[Rumpelstiltskin]

It must have taken a lot of effort to write.

In regard of the Xerox process, I always assumed it was the technology that created the thick black lines. But they were actually made by the animators (and the clean-up artists) themselves. At least in the finishing stages of the process.

Everybody who have tried to copy pencil drawings on a copying machine, knows that practically nothing comes out of it. One has to draw with a pen with ink, or a marker, and make rather thick lines, for the machine to be able to copy the drawings.

Disney and other studios had the same problem, even if the machine was modified specifically for animation. So while the animators had used hard pencils in the old days, like HB, 2H or 3B, now they had to use softer pencils like 6B, 8B, Ebony or Conté, which created lines that were thick and black enough to be registered by the copying machine (also red and blue lines ended up as invisible). I can imagine not all the artists were happy about using these pencils, and that it took some time to get used to. These lines would also often smear over the paper.

So when the APT-process was invented, the lines no longer had to be thick and heavy to be transferred to cels. Unfortunately it came a little late, since animation cels were abandoned completely just some years later.

[blackcauldron85]

(also red and blue lines ended up as invisible).
...
So when the APT-process was invented, the lines no longer had to be thick and heavy to be transferred to cels. Unfortunately it came a little late, since animation cels were abandoned completely just some years later.

I had wondered about the red and blue lines, but that makes sense that they came up invisible and that's why those colors were used.

If the lines fading with APT wasn't part of the process, I wonder if it would have been used longer, or if CAPS was just inevitable. (I mean, for the preservation and restoration of the films, CAPS was amazing!)

[Kyle]

Why are some suggesting red and blue lines ending up invisible is somehow a bug and not a feature? Animators needed a way to make their construction lines disappear easily without having to manually erase them, ruining the final lineart. So having them not show up was exactly what they wanted.

And yes, CAPs was inevitable, it streamlined the process and studios really needed anything they could get their hands on to cut down on this time consuming expensive process, as much as possible.

[blackcauldron85]

I didn't mean that the red or blue lines were a bad thing, just that I had seen them before and never put two and two together that they just show up invisible.

CAPS was a great technological achievement!

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I had wondered about the red and blue lines, but that makes sense that they came up invisible and that's why those colors were used.

If the lines fading with APT wasn't part of the process, I wonder if it would have been used longer, or if CAPS was just inevitable. (I mean, for the preservation and restoration of the films, CAPS was amazing!)

Yes, and it seems like the use of these colors, especially blue, have become a tradition when it comes to adding notes, even after they stopped using the Xerox-process (and it is possible they had to find another solution with the invention of color xerography in animation).

As Kyle mentioned, CAPS was probably inevitable. Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull had been pushing digital coloring on Disney for a long time, and when they got their chance, production cels were gone forever. But it would have been great it APT had been around long enough for someone to make one last great hand-drawn animated feature (or two) on cels, and pushing things like split exposures and possibly the optical printer to the limit.

Already mentioned in another post, but it probably doesn't harm repeating it:

Glen Keane: The fact is that technology has crossed my path consistently throughout my career, from doing the first computer animation with John Lasseter (Where The Wild Things Are), and even before that on Fox and the Hound. After doing all this charcoal drawing, I wanted that to be up on the screen, I did not want it to be cleaned up and painted traditionally. I was hunting around for a way to do it, and ran in to the Head of Research Don Iwerks (son of Ub Iwerks).

He said “Well, you know I’m thinking about another process of photographic cels, where you can actually photograph the artwork and it’ll be on the cel and you just paint the back of that, and we can have your charcoal drawings up on the screen.”

“Woah! Yeah, let’s do it!” But we ran out of time.

Link: https://www.skwigly.co.uk/glen-keane-interview/

It does sound like a version of the APT-process, even if it was not made by Don Iwerks.

About preservation for the CAPS-films, some of the earliest CAPS-movies were transferred to 35mm successive-exposure negatives for preservation, according to this website:

Robin Hood (1973) appears to be the last Disney feature photographed using successive exposure and printed in dye-transfer prints, but the successive-exposure technique continued for animation photography for many years, albeit with Eastmancolor release prints. Oliver & Company (1988) was the last Disney feature photographed entirely using successive exposure. The Little Mermaid (1989) was started as a successive-exposure production, but this method was abandoned midway through in favor of Eastmancolor negative. The film was the first Disney animated feature in 50 years not shot using successive exposure. Some later Disney productions made with digital intermediates were output to 35mm successive-exposure negative for preservation.

Link: https://www.filmatlas.com/entry/545

I have tried, without success so far, to find more information about the claim that about half of The Little Mermaid a successive-exposure production. But in an interview, Theo Gluck, Director of Library Restoration and Preservation for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, confirms some negatives were made for movies like The Beauty and the Beast for preservation. Another quote originally poste a while back:

TG: The Little Mermaid (1989) was shot on color negative primarily as a financial consideration.

By using EK color negative, you could far more easily farm out the work to different animation facilities and use multiple labs. There were some issues associated with Mermaid and the use of color negative so it was a one time only decision and the Studio went back to creating SE negatives for Beauty and the Beast and so on.

Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20081016054 ... 01308.html

Robin Hood is said to be the last movie using the dye transfer process, even if they continued to use the SE-process on their movies into the CAPS-era (except The Little Mermaid, as mentioned). The dye transfer process had a return in the 90s before it went away for good. I have not heard about Disney using any of their SE-negatives for their animation made after Robin Hood on this updated dye transfer process. If they did not use this chance when it was there, we are really talking about a bad decision and lost opportunity.

[blackcauldron85]

So the dye transfer process = Technicolor. I have to get ready for work, but I have my Google search open to learn more (thank you!).

Coincidentally, yesterday's Animation Obsessive newsletter is about CAPS:

When Disney Went Digital
https://animationobsessive.substack.com ... nt-digital

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Strange coincidence. A little thought about the article: "Disney’s leadership was eager to put CAPS to work — overeager, in fact. The software “wasn’t tested” and “wasn’t really finished” when Rescuers entered production, according to a member of CAPS’ team." The same article also says: "The groundbreaking debut of CAPS, at the end of The Little Mermaid, wasn’t advertised."

The first test of CAPS happened at the end of The Little Mermaid, when the movie was practically finished. In other words very late in production. And Rescuers Down Under had premiere about a year after The Little Mermaid.

This should mean that the production of Rescuers Down Under did not start before after The Little Mermaid was practically finished. That must have been a very fast production.

Imdb also lists Albert Francis Moore as "xerox processor" on several CAPS-movies. Which makes me curious; considering they didn't use animation cels on these movies, then what was xerox used for? Maybe he xeroxed the animators' drawings onto paper that was easier to scan into a computer? But that's just guessing.

And yes, Technicolor includes the dye transfer process which combined the three separate black and white images into a color image. The successive exposure concept was perfect for animation, so it's a missed chance that it was never (as far as I know) used on stop motion. Imagine if The Nightmare Before Christmas was shot that way, in addition to color film, and then used the negatives to make a dye transfer when the process had a little resurrection a few years later. It would really have given it a classic look.

The dye transfer process stopped being used after Robin Hood (1973), so if Disney still used the successive exposure camera with black and white negatives after that, I'm curious how the following movies were given colors.